Live from GT Gamefest!

So I’m spending my evening at the Klaus Advanced Computing Building at the semesterly (?) GT Gamefest. In other words, I’m spending my Saturday night at a LAN party. I don’t actually plan on playing any games; it’s just as fun to hang out with the admins, eat the free food, drink the free caffeine, and watch other people play while checking out some pretty badass gaming rigs. It also continues to blow my mind that it’s possible to do serious gaming on laptops these days. It’s really surprising how many people brought laptops to game on.

Speaking of laptops, this entry is brought to you by my laptop, courtesy of one of the admins, Chris, who was kind enough to loan me the power adapter to his Gateway laptop so that I can charge mine, since my adapter (#2 for those of you playing at home) is now, literally, in two pieces. I’ve ordered a new one, but delivery isn’t estimated until the 14th. Suck. But at least charging up the laptop to 100% will allow me some breathing room to get stuff off of here if/when I need to.

Update 11:01 p.m.:
Laptop is still charging. They ordered 110 pizzas from Dominos, and they pretty much got destroyed in under an hour. I again found myself recruited to help the admins, though I don’t mind…I did this last time, too. I get to hang out with fun nerdy people, eat their food, watch the money, and answer questions as I can. I’m also enjoying taking some pictures. The towers of pizza were something to be in awe of, so I shall share some pictures:

Update 12:14 a.m.: There has been some interest in the scrolling badges that the admins are wearing. They come in blue as well as red and can be obtained at Thinkgeek. They unfortunately don’t have enough to go around here for me, but it’s ok; I’m cute and I don’t need one as much as some of these other guys do. 🙂

It seems that the next food run will be to Wingnuts–tasty, tasty boneless wings. Hopefully Ben doesn’t destroy any more pylon lights in the process. Provided, he didn’t destroy the other one, per se…he did manage to return it to its upright position, and it still lights up.

This is only a small portion of the soda that was on hand.

Update 1:11 a.m.:
We appear to be entirely out of drinks. They started out with 600 pounds of sodas at 6 p.m. and it’s all gone. The event lasts until 8 a.m. There is apparently some Bawls on reserve somewhere, but I would imagine that once they bust those out, they’ll go pretty quick. I want to say that the drinks lasted until much later last time, and there was less of it. I get the feeling that some people might be hoarding…

Ben and Chris have gone out to get the wings, but it’s taking awhile, and the natives are getting restless. I think I may throttle the next person who asks, “when are the wings getting here?” And as soon as I typed that, someone asked me. I resisted the urge. I am a good person. People say nice things about me. Chris and Ben need to get back soon.

Update 1:25 a.m.:
Oh, I forgot to mention…Anime O-Tekku, Tech’s anime club, sort of teamed up with the Gamefest people to hold a parallel film fest event. The main “draw” is their annual showing of Rikki-Oh, which I have never seen, but is supposed to be a fantastically bad movie with special effects and violence rivaling the badness of Evil Dead 2. They’ve apparently just started it, but I have to man the registration table, and I’m really not in the mood for a lame slasher flick at the moment…

Update 1:45 a.m.:
Wings are here, finally. I was getting sick of people asking. Apparently they ordered from the Wingnuts that’s in another part of town instead of the one down the street and didn’t realize it. Oops. Next difficulty: wings, no plates. People are tearing up the boxes from the pizza to use. Yay recycling?

Update 2:16 a.m.:
Finally broke out the energy drinks–Monster and Bawls. The ridiculousness of food and drink distribution has caused us to reconsider how we do it next year. We may monitor more closely the food as it goes out, require an empty can for another soda, and perhaps sell energy drinks at cost, because people are dicks about free stuff.

Update 3:34 a.m.:
Spent about an hour closing down registration, cleaning up a little, and setting up the overnight admins with the rest of the prizes. Got my laptop charged to 100%, and Chris said that he might have another power adapter laying around that I can borrow until my new one arrives. Yay! I’m home now, writing this last entry from the desktop on my living room floor. Certainly not as comfortable as stretching out on the couch with my laptop, but I must conserve its battery for matters more pressing than updating a blog that no one reads. 🙂

On the off chance that someone is reading, particularly for the information about Gamefest, registration for the remaining tournaments is closed, but spectating is free, as is the open gaming, and the event closes at 8 a.m. I, however, will hopefully be off of my Bawls-induced caffeine high by then and be sound asleep.

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Hillary Lipko is a digital media communications consultant, technology advocate, and twice-graduate from Georgia Tech.
When she’s not up to her elbows in blogs, analytics, bug reports, and style guides, she can be found running fan conventions, enjoying a good beer, or sharing her deepest secrets with her pet Betta fish.